The Notebook

party, she saw in him exactly what she needed: someone with confidence
about the future and a sense of humour that drove all her fears away.
He was handsome, intelligent and driven, a successful lawyer eight years
older than she, and he pursued his job with passion, not only winning cases
but also making a name for himself. She understood his vigorous pursuit of
success, for her father and most of the men she met in her social circle were
the same way. Like them, he’d been raised that way, and, in the caste system
of the South, family name and accomplishments were often the most
important consideration in marriage. In some cases they were the only
consideration.
Though she had quietly rebelled against this idea since childhood and had
dated a few men best described as reckless, she found herself drawn to Lon’s
easy ways and had gradually come to love him.
Despite the long hours he worked, he was good to her. He was a gentleman,
mature and responsible, and during those terrible periods of the war when she
needed someone to hold her, he never once turned her away. She felt secure
with him and knew he loved her as well and that was why she had accepted
his proposal.
Thinking these things made her feel guilty about being here, and she knew
she should pack her things and leave before she changed her mind. She
picked up her handbag, hesitated and almost made it to the door. But
coincidence had pushed her here, and she put the bag down, again realizing
that if she quit now she would always wonder what would have happened.
She couldn’t live with that
She went to the bathroom and started a bath. After checking the temperature
she walked to the chest of drawers in the bedroom, taking off her gold
earrings as she crossed the room. She found her sponge bag, opened it and
pulled out a razor and a bar of soap, then undressed in front of the chest of
drawers. She looked at herself in the mirror.

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Her body was firm and well proportioned, breasts softly rounded, stomach
flat, legs slim. She’d inherited her mother’s high cheekbones, smooth skin
and blonde hair, but her best feature was her own. She had “eyes like ocean
waves”, as Lon liked to say.
Taking the razor and soap, she went to the bathroom again, turned off the tap,
set a towel where she could reach it and stepped gingerly into the bath.
She liked the way a bath relaxed her, and she slipped lower in the water. The
day had been long and her back was tense, but she was pleased she had
finished shopping so quickly. She had to go hack to Raleigh with something
tangible, and the things she had picked out would work fine. She made a
mental note to find the names of some other stores in the Beaufort area, then
suddenly doubted she would need to. Lon wasn’t the type to check up on her.
She reached for the soap, lathered up and began to shave her legs.
As she did, she thought about her parents and what they would think of her
behaviour. No doubt they would disapprove, especially her mother. Her
mother had never really accepted what had happened the summer they’d spent
here and wouldn’t accept it now; no matter what reason she gave.
She soaked a while longer in the bath before finally getting out and towelling
off. She went to the closet and looked for a dress, finally choosing a long
yellow one that dipped slightly in the front, the kind that was common in the
South. She slipped it on and looked in the mirror, turning from side to side. It
fitted her well, but she eventually decided against it and put it back on the
hanger. Instead she found a more casual, less revealing dress and put that on.
Light blue with a touch of lace, it buttoned up at the front, and though it
didn’t look quite as nice as the first one, it conveyed an image she thought
would be more appropriate.
She wore little make-up, just a touch of eye shadow and mascara to accent her
eyes. Perfume next, not too much. She found a pair of small hooped earrings,
put those on, then slipped on the tan, low-heeled sandals she had been
wearing earlier. She brushed her blonde hair, pinned it up and looked in the
mirror. No, it was too much, she thought, and she let it back down. Better.
When she was finished she stepped back and evaluated herself. She looked
good: not too dressy, not too casual. She didn’t want to overdo it. After all,
she didn’t know what to expect. It had been a long time—probably too long—
and many different things could have happened, even things she didn’t want
to consider.
She looked down and saw her hands were shaking, and she laughed to herself.
It was strange; she wasn’t normally this nervous.

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She found her handbag and car keys, then picked up the room key.
She turned it over in her hand a couple of times, thinking - You’ve come this
far, don’t give up now. She nearly left then, but instead sat on the bed again.
She checked her watch. Almost six o’clock. She knew she had to leave in a
few minutes—she didn’t want to arrive after dark—but she needed a little
more time.
“Damn,” she whispered. “What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here. There’s
no reason for it.” But once she said it she knew it wasn’t true. If nothing else,
she would have her answer.
She opened her handbag and thumbed through it until she came to a folded-up
piece of newspaper. After taking it out slowly, almost reverently, she unfolded
it and stared at it for a while. “This is why,”
she finally said to herself, “this is what it’s all about.”
NOAH GOT UP at five and kayaked for an hour up Brices Creek, as he
usually did. When he finished he changed into his work clothes, warmed
some bread rolls from the day before, grabbed a couple of apples and washed
his breakfast down with two cups of coffee.
He worked on the fencing again, repairing the posts. It was an Indian summer,
the temperature over eighty degrees, and by lunchtime he was hot and tired
and glad of the break.
He ate at the creek because the mullets were jumping. He liked to watch them
jump three or four limes and glide through the air before vanishing into the
brackish water. For some reason he had always been pleased by the fact that
their instinct hadn’t changed for thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of
years.
Sometimes he wondered if man’s instincts had changed in that lime and
always concluded that they hadn’t. At least in the basic, most primal ways. As
far as he could tell, man had always been aggressive, always striving to
dominate, trying to control the world and everything in it. The war in Europe
and Japan proved that.
He stopped working a little after three and walked to a small shed that sat near
his dock. He went in, found his fishing pole, a couple of lures and some live
crickets he kept on hand, then walked out to the dock, baited his hook and
cast his line.
Fishing always made him reflect on his life, and he did so now.
After his mother died he could remember spending his days in a dozen
different homes. For one reason or another, he stuttered badly as a child and

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was teased for it. He began to speak less and less, and by the age of five he
wouldn’t speak at all. When he started classes, his teachers thought he was
retarded and recommended that he be pulled out of school.
Instead, his father took matters into his own hands. He kept him in school and
afterwards made him come to the timber yard where he worked, to haul and
stack wood. “It’s good that we spend some time together,” he would say as
they worked side-by-side, “just like my daddy and I did.”
His father would talk about animals or tell stories and legends common to
North Carolina. Within a few months Noah was speaking again, though not
well, and his father decided to teach him to read with books of poetry. “Learn
to read this aloud and you’ll be able to say anything you want to.” His father
had been right again, and by the following year Noah had lost his stutter. But
he continued to go to the timber yard every day simply because his father was
there, and in the evenings he would read the works of Whitman and Tennyson
aloud as his father rocked beside him. He had been reading poetry ever since.
When he got a little older he spent most of his weekends and vacations alone.
He explored the Croatan forest in his first canoe, following Brices Creek for
twenty miles until he could go no further, then hiked the remaining miles to
the coast. Camping and exploring became his passion, and he spent hours in
the forest, whistling quietly and playing his guitar for beavers and geese and
wild blue herons.
Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made,
was good for the soul, and he’d always identified with poets.
Although he was quiet, years of heavy lifting at the timber yard helped him
excel in sports, and his athletic success led to popularity.
He enjoyed the football and track meets, and, though most of his teammates
spent their free time together as well, he rarely joined them. He had a few
girlfriends in school but none had ever made an impression on him. Except
for one. And she came after graduation.
Allie. His Allie.
He remembered talking to Fin about Allie after they left the festival that first
night, and Fin had laughed. Then he’d made two predictions: first that they
would fall in love, and second that it wouldn’t work out.
There was a slight tug at his line and Noah hoped for a large-mouth bass, but
the tugging eventually stopped and, after reeling his line in and checking the
bait, he cast again.
Fin ended up being right on both counts. Most of the summer she had to make

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excuses to her parents whenever they wanted to see each other. It wasn’t that
they didn’t like him—it was that he was from a different class, too poor, and
they would never approve if their daughter became serious with someone like
him. “I don’t care what my parents think, I love you and always will,” she
would say. “We’ll find a way to be together.”
But in the end they couldn’t. By early September the tobacco had been
harvested and she had no choice but to return with her family to Winston-
Salem. “Only the summer is over, Allie, not us,” he’d said the morning she
left. “We’ll never be over.” But they were. For a reason he didn’t understand,
the letters he wrote went unanswered.
He decided to leave New Bern to help get her off his mind, and also because
the Depression made earning a living in New Bern almost impossible. He
went first to Norfolk and worked at a shipyard for six months before he was
laid off, then moved to New Jersey because he’d heard the economy wasn’t so
bad there.
He found a job in a scrap yard, separating scrap metal from everything else.
The owner, a Jewish man named Morris Goldman, was intent on collecting as
much scrap metal as he could, convinced that a war was going to start in
Europe and that America would be dragged in again. Noah didn’t care. He
was just happy to have a job.
He worked hard. Not only did it help him keep his mind off Allie during the
day, but it was something he felt he had to do. His daddy had always said:
“Give a day’s work for a day’s pay. Anything less is stealing.” That attitude
pleased his boss. “It’s a shame you aren’t Jewish,” Goldman would say,
“you’re such a fine boy in so many other ways.” It was the best compliment
Goldman could give.
He continued to think about Allie at night. He wrote to her once a month but
never received a reply. Eventually he wrote one final letter and forced himself
to accept the fact that the summer they’d spent with one another was the only
thing they’d ever share.
Still, though, she stayed with him. Three years after the last letter, he went to
Winston-Salem in the hope of finding her. He went to her house, discovered
that she had moved and, after talking to some neighbours, finally called her
father’s firm. The girl who answered was new and didn’t recognize the name,
but she poked around the personnel files for him. She found out that Allie’s
father had left the company and that no forwarding address was listed. That
was the first and last time he ever looked for her.
For the next eight years he worked for Goldman. As the years dragged on, the
company grew and he was promoted. By 1940 he had mastered the business

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and was running the entire operation, brokering the deals and managing a
staff of thirty. The yard had become the largest scrap-metal dealer on the east
coast.
During that time he dated a few different women. He became serious with
one, a waitress from the local diner with deep blue eyes and silky black hair.
Although they dated for two years and had many good times together, he
never came to feel the same way about her as he did about Allie. She was a
few years older than he was, and it was she who taught him the ways to please
a woman, the places to touch and kiss, the things to whisper.
Towards the end of their relationship she’d told him once, “I wish I could give
you what you’re looking for, but I don’t know what it is.
There’s a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me.
It’s as if your’ mind is on someone else. It’s like you keep waiting for her to
pop out of thin air to take you away from all this…” A month later she visited
him at work and told him she’d met someone else. He understood. They